


Capes and Cowls #5

by Vigs



Series: One Multiverse Over [10]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: (But she became disabled in a different way), (Rick and Babs are taking it slow physically), (between Bruce and Selina), Anal, Awkward Boners, Canon Disabled Character, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Multiplicity/Plurality, Original DC reboot, Summer vacation episode!, some of which is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:37:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: Barbara brings Rick along on a trip to the beach, and they make an extremely unexpected new friend. Batman's relationship with Selina continues to intensify.





	1. Oracle

**Author's Note:**

> There are two storylines in this one, and the Batman/Catwoman one is very explicit while the Barbara/Rick one is pretty PG. There are some references to abuse, though. There'll be CNs at the beginning of chapters that need them as usual, and I'll add a chapter-by-chapter summary to [Supplemental Materials](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561334/chapters/40863722) once it's finished. (If you want to read this story without bothering with the previous ones, there are summaries of the earlier installments there so that you can catch up if you want.)

For Barbara, summer break generally meant that she could spend more time openly on her main computer instead of secretly on the rig built into her wheelchair. For Rick, apparently, it meant patrols every night, except when Bruce sent him off to a monastery in the Himalayas or something for extra training.

“Do you ever just go on vacation?” Barbara asked when Rick told her this. They were spending the afternoon in Rick’s room (and that sometimes still gave her a little thrill of excitement and nervousness; they were in Rick’s  _ bedroom _ , with his  _ bed _ right there…) playing Rock Band 3 on his LexBox and occasionally making out. On a couch, not on his bed; Rick’s room was huge.

“Only if it’s cover for something else, really,” Rick said. “It’s not like B never has fun, but he’s definitely pretty, you know, focused.”

“What about you, though?” she asked. “He was Batman for years before you joined him. You could go on vacation for a while.”

“What, by myself? That doesn’t even sound fun,” Rick said. “You wanna do another song?”

“Sure, but… um, it’s okay if you don’t want to, I know you have important stuff to do and it wouldn’t be, you know, fancy or anything, but I was wondering if maybe…”

“Spit it out, Babs,” Rick said with a laugh.

“Dad and I go to the beach every year,” she said. “It’s the one vacation I can get him to take. We go down to the Jersey shore—”

“Ew, Jersey,” Rick said automatically.

“I mean, yeah, but not all of us can jet off to the Mediterranean or whatever,” Barbara said. “Anyway, he’s always told me I could bring a friend with me. We’re leaving on Tuesday, the week after next. I’d love it if you came. You know, if you want.”

“Are you sure that’d be okay with him?” Rick asked. “‘You can bring a friend’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘you can bring your boyfriend.’”

“He actually suggested that I invite you,” she said. “He wants a chance to get to know you better.”

Rick had been over to their apartment for dinner a couple of times, but they’d only been able to get through all of dinner without her dad being called away to deal with some emergency once. And of course, they pretty much always hung out at Rick’s, ostensibly because he lived in a freaking mansion, but actually because that meant easy access to the Batcave.

“I’ll talk to B about it,” Rick said. “I mean, I’d love to, but I don’t really want to leave him without any backup with Scarecrow still at large…”

Barbara scowled. She should’ve been able to pick up Scarecrow from his trail of spoofed credit cards and chemical purchases. He was just a script kiddie. Somehow, though, he kept eluding her.

“...but since it seems like he’s gone underground since Zatara did, you know, that thing he did, it would probably be okay,” he continued. “As long as none of the other heavy hitters break out.”

“Arkham really needs better security,” Barbara said.

“Yeah, well.” Rick shrugged. “B says our job stops once they’re in custody, because otherwise we’d be taking too much power for ourselves. And that extends to, you know, handing Arkham a big bag of cash to beef up their security, in his mind.”

“That seems backwards, but whatever,” she said. “You want to ask him now?”

“I think he’s working today,” Rick said. “Like, actual Wayne Enterprises work. But I’ll ask when he gets home.”

“Cool. So, another song, or do you wanna make out some more?”

It was a while before they got around to playing another song.

Bruce’s response to Rick’s question was about what he’d predicted--he could go,  _ if _ none of the other big names were out of Arkham by then and  _ if _ Bruce didn’t get called out of the city by something unavoidable.

“I’m not really sure what I should tell my dad,” Barbara said. “I mean, ‘he’s allowed to come with us unless the Joker’s out, in which case he has to stay in Gotham’ would probably be a little confusing.”

“Tell him Rick can go,” Bruce suggested. “If it turns out he can’t, you can just say that he got sick, or that you had a fight--”

“I’m not going to pretend to have a fight with Rick!” Barbara protested, aghast.

“...right, of course. Because you want him to approve of your relationship.” Bruce looked mildly embarrassed. “Sorry, serious relationships and parental approval thereof aren’t exactly my area of expertise.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you admit that something isn’t your area of expertise before,” Barbara teased. She and Bruce had a much better understanding these days, now that she was sure that he respected her and was good to Rick. And now that he knew she was competent and reliable and that she was good to Rick, she supposed.

“It’s a rare event,” Bruce said. “You should probably put it on your calendar. Anyway, I have an… alternate source of backup now, if the need arises. It should be fine.”

“You’d work with Catwoman  _ again _ ?” Rick asked. “B, come on…”

“She was very helpful last time,” Bruce said. “Do you want to go to the beach or not?”

Rick grumbled a little, but conceded. And that’s how, two weeks later, Rick, Barbara, and Barbara’s dad ended up in a cheap rental van headed out of the city. It was kind of nice having her two favorite people in a car with her, Barbara reflected fondly, even if they weren’t quite comfortable with each other yet.

The motion of the car and the sound of the two of them exchanging stiff smalltalk sent Barbara to sleep. She’d been up even later than Rick last night, taking one last crack at tying something solid to the Scarecrow’s online presence, but no dice.

She woke up, unsure of how much time had passed, when she heard her dad’s voice get more serious, but decided to keep her eyes closed. Her dad was probably going to want to give Rick the third degree at some point; better that he do it here, where she could clandestinely listen in, than corner him later at the top of a staircase or something.

“You’re Barb’s first boyfriend, you know that?” her dad asked.

“I know,” Rick said warily. He could hear the shift in her dad’s voice from actually-casual to carefully-casual too, Babs knew. She had to fight a little not to smile.

“I always told myself it shouldn’t matter who she brought home to dinner as long as it was someone who made her happy,” her dad said. “Race, gender, tattoos all over their face, whatever. I may be an Easter-and-Christmas Catholic, but I’m not closed-minded. But I have to say, I didn’t expect her to bring home a rich, popular jock. That’s the one thing I wasn’t prepared for.”

“I don’t know about ‘jock’…” Rick said uncomfortably.

“Son, I’m pretty sure gymnastics qualifies you at Vreeland,” her dad said drily. “They don’t even  _ have _ a football team for you to be captain of.”

“Fair enough,” Rick acknowledged. “Sir, I really like Babs--”

“And to top it off, his dad’s the star of the gossip columns,” her dad continued. “Now, I don’t generally read that garbage, but even I have some idea of the kind of things Bruce Wayne gets up to. Doesn’t exactly seem like the best role model for a kid, especially when it comes to relationships.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk that way about him, sir. Bruce knows what he wants from relationships, and he always makes sure anyone he’s involved with knows that,” Rick said evenly. “I’m serious about Babs, and she knows that.”

“Fair enough.” Her dad sighed. “I guess I just always thought being able to say ‘my dad’s the police commissioner’ would help her with any boys who tried to get fresh. But ‘my dad’s a billionaire’ beats just about anything.”

“I would never, ever do a thing to Babs that she didn’t want,” Rick said. “If she didn’t want to do anything but hold hands from now on, then fine, that’s all we’d do. You’ve gotta know Babs wouldn’t get involved with anyone who didn’t respect her bodily autonomy.”

“I know,” he said fondly. “I just worry, is all. We live in a dangerous city, and it’s more dangerous if you’re a woman, or a teenager, or disabled. All of those together, not a great target to be in the middle of.”

“I know,” Rick said seriously. “I don’t know if you remember, but you were on the case of, you know, my parents. They were out-of-towners, and they were Romani, and that wasn’t a good combination either.”

“Yeah, I remember,” her dad said. “I thought Bat--people thought I was crazy, letting Bruce Wayne take you in instead of taking you to a safe house, but at least I knew he couldn’t be bought. Guess it’s turned out about as well as a tragedy like that could, all things considered.”

“Batman told you to let Bruce take me?” Rick asked. He sounded surprised. Barbara wondered if he really hadn’t known. Her dad had definitely made that slip on purpose, probably to gauge Rick’s response.

“Course not. The police would never work with a lawless vigilante,” her dad said.

“Right,” Rick said, amused. “You know, it’s really a shame you’re too underfunded to get that spotlight on the roof of the station fixed.”

“I keep saying that,” her dad agreed.


	2. Batman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some sexytimes, some Catwomaning

It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that Batman was  _ glad _ to see Robin and Oracle leave Gotham for a week. They were both extremely helpful. But coordinating with them meant that they both knew if he ended the evening in Catwoman’s apartment, which was… distracting. It damaged their team cohesion. (Both of them thought he was making a huge mistake getting involved with her, and Bruce almost agreed, except… except… Selina.)

“Two nights in a row?” Selina asked when he came to visit the second night after the teenagers left town. She sounded like she was trying to hide how pleased she was. “Have I been a good girl, or has Gotham?”

“It’s been pretty quiet,” he said as he removed his armor. Their assignations before her release had never involved this much conversation. Being able to just  _ talk  _ to her felt unsettlingly good. “Scarecrow’s keeping his head down, and none of the other major threats are at large.”

“Should I be flattered or offended?” she asked. “Am I not a threat, or not major?”

“You’ve never been a major threat to Gotham,” he said. “Only to me.”

She smiled, apparently satisfied, and beckoned him closer. He went. Someday she’d beckon him off a cliff, and he’d be too used to following. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

He’d started taking off his cowl while they were in bed, leaving only the backup mask that he wore underneath it. She’d laughed at him when she realized he wore two masks, but it had been a sweet, affectionate laugh, and she carded her fingers through his hair happily.

(Dangerous—he didn’t bother to change the appearance of his hair when he was in costume, since it was covered by the cowl—but dark brown wasn’t an uncommon hair color, even paired with his pale skin tone, and as long as she didn’t see her friend Bruce in the same lighting, she wasn’t likely to make the connection.)

It left him more vulnerable. The mask was close-fitting with a wide band, extremely unlikely to come off accidentally, but one tug and she would see his whole face. But it let him get his mouth on her without scraping the stiff sides of the cowl against the tender skin of her inner thighs. She’d always been responsive, but he found that he could give her orgasm after orgasm with his mouth and his fingers before finally giving in to her pleas and shoving his cock inside her, and she’d be drenched and twitching and incoherent with pleasure—

And then he could lay beside her for a while, even hold her, without feeling as gut-twistingly absurd (Batman could never look absurd, he always had to be either unnoticeable or terrifying,  _ always _ ) as he did when he was wearing nothing but the cowl. The mask could almost have been an accessory, a game they were playing, if it wasn’t for the lenses designed to hide his eyes and protect him from tear gas or pepper spray.

“Think you’ll let me help you out again sometime?” she asked, carefully casual. “I’ve got to admit, I’m getting a little cabin fever. I need to be back on the rooftops.”

“Maybe.”

“Not that I’m saying I’ll go back to crime if you don’t!” she clarified. She sounded sincere. “It just sounded like you were proposing something ongoing, that first time, not a one-time thing.”

Batman grimaced slightly. He had been, at the moment, but after both their cases were over, Robin had loudly, and in earshot of both Oracle and Alfred, enumerated all the security risks he had taken and all of his own rules he had broken. Everything he’d said had been true.

“Whatever.” She rolled away from him slightly, probably misinterpreting his expression.

“If you have any information about Scarecrow—”

“I would have given it to you already,  _ obviously _ ,” she said. “But he and I never got along, and his henchmen never really lasted long enough for us to get friendly. I don’t know why anyone works for him or Joker.”

“Poverty,” Batman said. “Families to feed, debts to pay, no legal options for employment.” Gotham had an upper crust and a vast population barely hanging on to their status as working poor, without much in between. He did his best to help—the Wayne Foundation had free clinics, homeless shelters, halfway houses, and job training centers all over Gotham, not to mention all its scholarship programs and Wayne Enterprises’ liberal hiring policies—but he couldn’t change the socioeconomics of his city single-handedly, and Gotham’s reputation as a relatively good place to be poor or homeless, largely because of all those amenities he and his family had built, kept more people pouring in all the time, to the point that “taking the Greyhound to Gotham” was slang for hitting rock bottom all over the northeast US. Nearly anyone who did manage to claw their way up to the middle class got out as soon as they could, at least as far as the suburbs.

“Is that why you’re so dedicated to not killing?” Selina asked. She’d propped herself up on one elbow to idly trace patterns with her fingernail in his chest hair, giving him goosebumps. “Because really, society’s to blame?”

“Partly.”

“That and keeping the cops off your back?” she guessed.

“That helps,” he agreed. “But mainly, it’s because not starting is easier than stopping would be.”

Her fingernail stilled.

“You’re afraid that if you killed the Joker or someone, you’d just, what, keep killing?” she asked.

“It’s a high-probability outcome,” he said. He’d never had this conversation before. Alfred knew, of course, but they’d never  _ talked _ about it. He hadn’t even told Robin all of this, just told him that he had to be ready to stop him if he ever gave up on their moral code. Robin had agreed, but hadn’t really understood, he knew. Confessing to Selina felt strangely… unburdening. “I enjoy it too much. Hurting people. I would probably enjoy killing people. That’s why I can’t start.”

Selina looked at him wordlessly for a moment before she resumed drawing her random patterns. No, not random—she was drawing a cat across his chest.

“You’ll trust me with all that,” she said finally, “But you won’t even tell me your name.”

He shrugged slightly, his motions hampered by the pillow he rested on.

“Masks under masks,” she muttered.

“We were both wearing masks when you seduced me,” he reminded her.

“We were, weren’t we?” she said, and grinned. “That was fun.”

“I’m not going to take your ankle tracker off just so we can have sex on a roof.”

“I wasn’t asking!” she protested. “But if I did ask a small favor, think you could oblige me?”

“Depends on the favor. You know that.”

“Well, yes, but the rules have been changing so fast lately,” she said, stroking his bare cheek. “It’s hard to keep up.”

He grabbed her hand—too close to his mask for comfort—and held it.

“What do you want, Selina?” he asked.

“It’s just a small favor,” she said. “Something you were probably going to do anyway. Just don’t be at the Museum of Modern Art at midnight tomorrow, that’s all.”

He stared at her.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can,” she said, intentionally missing his point. “It’s perfectly easy to not be somewhere. You’re not at the museum right now.”

“Selina. Don’t tell me you’re going to—”

“Nothing criminal is going to happen,” she said. “You just need to not be there. You can do that for me, can’t you?” She moved in to kiss him, and he jerked away before getting out of bed entirely and mechanically beginning to get dressed.

He’d thought… he’d really thought…

“I’ll just take that as a yes,” she purred—not a bedroom voice, the voice she’d used when they were in one of their old rooftop fights. “Thanks, Batsy, you’re a peach.”

He left the apartment without another word.

The next night, he tried to rationalize it. She’d been testing him, teasing him. Or his admission had made her uncomfortable, so she tried to put some distance back between them. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

But he was on the roof of the Museum of Modern Art at 11:30, watching the signal from her ankle tracker approach on his wrist display (he’d hacked the monitoring system ages ago). The tracker he’d hidden on her belt was keeping pace with it. She was definitely on her way.

What the hell was she thinking? She hadn’t even taken off her ankle monitor, and she’d practically  _ told _ him where she’d be. She was going to go back to prison. Well, he’d be the one to bring her in, he resolved grimly. That should settle the issue for anyone who thought he could be persuaded to  _ look the other way _ . Including her.

It would be best to catch her red-handed. He kept to the shadows, watching. Sure enough, her car—her own car, without the license plate hidden or anything—pulled up just a bit before midnight. She climbed up an exterior wall, cut a hand-sized hole in one of the windows, and reached around to deftly disable the alarm wires—not the ones on the window, but the ones coming from a nearby fire door. She dropped down to the ground and sauntered in through the fire door, cool as you please.

It had always been a reluctant pleasure to watch her work. He wasn’t sure he could have done a neater job breaking in.

The museum was designed to let in a lot of natural light. It was easy enough to follow her progress from outside. She evaded the security cameras gracefully, hugging the walls or even clinging to the ceiling to stay out of their field of view. Finally she leapt over one last camera’s field of view to land in front of a small abstract painting resembling a cat—one of the museum’s more valuable pieces, of course.

He crashed through the skylight as she began to cut through the security glass over the painting.

The alarms sounded for a moment, but were quickly silenced, and the lights came on. A man in a suit, flanked by two security guards, ran into the room.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the man in the suit yelled at Batman, before turning to Catwoman and asking, at the same volume, “What the hell is he doing here?”

“Sorry, George. I told you I’d try to get him to stay away, but that I couldn’t guarantee it,” she said, removing her cowl. Up close, he could see that she was wearing some sort of body camera.

“You need a phone number!” the man in the suit—George, apparently—told Batman, shaking a finger in his face. “We let the police know we’d be testing our security system tonight, but how were we supposed to let you know, huh? Shouldn’t you be catching the Scarecrow instead of wrecking our ceiling? There’s broken glass  _ everywhere _ , we won’t be able to open tomorrow!”

Batman glared at Selina, who was smiling smugly at him.

“Don’t worry, George,” she said, and tapped the side of the camera she wore. “You can probably sell the footage from this—everything that doesn’t show how your security system works, I mean. Batman caught flat-footed; it’ll be a hit.”

“I’ll cover the damages,” Batman gritted out. “Keep the footage private and bill Catwoman. I’ll pay her back.”

“Fine, but you’re covering repair, cleanup,  _ and _ the loss in revenue from tomorrow!” George said. “And don’t you dare grapple out of here and cause  _ more _ damage to the roof. Use a fucking door for once in your life!”

Batman glared at Selina again. She smiled sweetly back, clearly holding back laughter.

“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth, and made a humiliating retreat from the art museum.


	3. Robin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: Awkward teenage boner, rescue from drowning

The good news was, Babs had a beach-accessible wheelchair in addition to her regular one. (The other good news was that she looked  _ fantastic _ in a one-piece swimsuit. Rick had to remind himself repeatedly not to ogle her with her dad looking, but it was really hard, especially with the appreciative looks he’d seen her sending his way.)

The bad news was, it wasn’t a sleek custom job like her regular wheelchair; it was a bulky, eye-catching construction of PVC pipe and extra-large wheels, and was difficult for her to operate manually; it was designed to have someone behind her pushing. The beach was ridiculously crowded, too, and all the convenient points of access were stairs down from the boardwalk.

(The weird news was that next time the Commissioner was briefing Batman and Robin on some kind of terrible crime, Rick was going to have a hard time not picturing Mr. Gordon’s extremely clashy Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks.)

“Somehow I forget every year how much this sucks,” Babs said, looking down at the beach from the boardwalk. Rick knew she must be smarting at having to be pushed around.

“If you want, we can stick that thing back in the car and I can give you a piggyback ride,” Rick offered.

“I offer that every year,” Mr. Gordon said. (He’d told Rick to call him “Jim,” but “Mr. Gordon” was the best he could do; it was hard enough not to call him “Commissioner.”) “But she hasn’t taken me up on it since she was eleven.”

“That’s because if you threw out your back carrying me, nobody would’ve been there to get  _ either _ of us off the beach,” Babs said.  She gave Rick a calculating look. He wasn’t sure whether she was trying to evaluate his ability to carry her or trying to decide whether having her boyfriend carry her would hurt her pride more than having her dad do it, but he knew better than to push.

“Yeah, okay,” she finally said. “I guess I’ll let you be my chair for the day.”

“You’re too kind,” he said.

They went back to the car and got the chair put away. Mr. Gordon took the umbrella and the bag of beach supplies, and Babs pulled herself onto Rick’s back. Sometimes he forgot how strong her arms were.

“Comfy?” He asked once he got her legs in a position where he could support some of her weight.

“Chairs can’t talk,” she said loftily, which he took as a yes. “Go already! I want to get in the water.”

“You’re sure you have enough sunscreen on?” Mr. Gordon asked. They’d applied it back at the hotel.

“ _ Yes _ , dad, I’m positive,” she said. “Come on, chair, let’s ditch the old man and hit the surf.”

“Sorry, Mr. Gordon,” Rick said. “I’d wait for you, but apparently I’m a chair.”

“Oh, go on,” Mr. Gordon said. “Barb will recognize our umbrella when she wants to get out of the water. Don’t go out too far!”

“We won’t,” Rick promised, although he knew his definition of “too far” probably didn’t match Mr. Gordon’s. He’d pulled uncooperative or unconscious people  _ way _ bigger than Babs out of Gotham Bay before, even in spots where the water was way over his head. (With a rebreather on, but still.) Not that he intended to do that here; he didn’t know this beach, and getting caught in the undertow while carrying Babs didn’t sound like a fun time at all.

Rick bobbed and weaved his way through the crowd on the beach, making Babs laugh. She had a great laugh. Having her arms and legs around him was also great. Getting into the cold water kept it from being a little  _ too _ great.

“You look really hot with your shirt off,” she said in his ear. “I can’t believe you have an  _ actual _ six-pack.”

“I’m happy to take it off any time you like,” he told her. “I worked hard for these abs. It’s good to have them appreciated.”

Eventually they hit a spot where the water came up to about his diaphragm between waves, but didn’t go over his head during waves. He figured that was probably the edge of “out too far.”

“Let me down?” Babs asked, almost shy. “I should be able to sort of stand here. Buoyancy and all.”

Rick carefully relaxed his grip on her, letting her legs drop to brush against the bottom. He turned around so they were standing face to face.

“Hi,” he said, somewhat inanely.

“Hi.” She smiled at him. Man, there was a lot of her body against a lot of his body right now. A lot of skin and very very thin, wet swimsuit fabric.

“You’re dad’s probably watching,” Rick said, although he couldn’t really bear to look away from her to confirm that. Green eyes and red hair and  _ wow _ , that smile.

“Watching you chivalrously support me? Yeah, probably,” she said.

“I’m afraid he thinks I’m some kind of—”

“I heard your conversation in the car,” she interrupted. “He was being silly. He knows you’re not Bruce. He doesn’t even  _ dislike _ Bruce, he just wouldn’t want me dating him. Which, uh, agreed.”

“Good,” Rick said.

The motion of the waves was… interesting. Babs would bob towards him and away from him, becoming lighter and heavier in his arms in turn. Somebody had told him that in old movies, any time they cut to a shot of waves on the beach you knew it was a signal that the characters in the preceding scene had been having sex. Which was silly except for how it actually wasn’t silly at all.

“I do have sensation below my waist, you know,” Babs said, grinning slyly at him. “It’s just muscular control I don’t have much of.”

“Oh, uh. Good?” He had a boner. Babs could feel that he had a boner. He started trying to angle his waist away from her in a way that wouldn’t be visible from shore.

“I didn’t say it was a problem,” she said, and kissed him. Had to keep it PG, had to keep it PG, there were kids around and her dad was watching.

“It’s going to be a problem if I’m like this when we get out of the water,” he said when she pulled back.

“Yeah,  _ your _ problem.” She was evil. B had somehow passed on his weird attraction to evil women and now Rick was going to be trapped in the ocean forever trying to hide a boner from Commissioner Gordon.

Mind over matter. Think about boring things: algebra, Babs’ voice when she helped him with algebra, nope that wouldn’t work. Think about gross things: the way dumpsters in Gotham smelled in the summer, while he swung past them with Babs’ voice in his ear—

Man, he just couldn’t win.

“I’m going to die in the ocean,” he informed her. “Either I’ll stay out here forever and eventually drown, or I’ll get out of the water and your dad will shoot me.”

“He didn’t take his  _ gun  _ to the  _ beach _ ,” Babs said, laughing.

“Oh, tell me how absurd that is, Miss I-take-this-with-me-everywhere-even-to-school.”

“I don’t take it to school anymore,” she reminded him. “That was my deal with Bruce.”

“You are so weird,” he informed her. “You’re weirder than I am, and I was raised by a  _ circus _ and then by  _ B _ . How did you get so weird?”

“Hard work and determination,” she said.

“Yeah? Is that how you got so amazing, too?”

“No, I was born amazing,” she said loftily.

“Damn, I guess that means I’ll never be able to catch up to—” Rick cut himself off when motion further down the beach caught his eye. That wasn’t someone running into the water for fun; that was a lifeguard sprinting. She must have spotted someone Rick couldn’t see past the waves.

“What’s up?” Babs asked, turning to follow his gaze. “Oh, shit. Should we do something?”

“We should get to shore,” Rick said. “If they’re out, I can help the lifeguard with CPR or crowd control.”

Babs swung herself around and back into piggyback position.

“Go for it,” she said.

Rick made it to shore well before the lifeguard, and then ran down the beach with Babs still on his back so that he’d be able to meet the lifeguard as she came in. It took a weirdly long time for her to get back to shore. She was clearly a fast, strong swimmer; the person she was towing must have been  _ way _ out there.

“Clear a space!” Rick yelled, trying to put some authority into his voice without slipping into his Robin voice. (Luckily, his boner had gone down when he realized someone’s life might be in danger. That would probably have undercut his authority quite a bit.)

The lifeguard was towing a teenager, maybe fifteen years old, a black guy with startlingly blond hair. When they got close to shore, he leaned heavily on the lifeguard: conscious, but clearly unable to stand on his own. Exhaustion? Rick looked him over for injuries as well as he could from a distance and saw a slash of red on the side of his neck for just a moment, before it disappeared. He was wearing what looked like the bottom half of a black wetsuit.

The lifeguard set the guy down in the space Rick had cleared. Up close, he didn’t look injured, but there did seem to be thin lines on his neck, three on each side. They didn’t quite look like scars.

“Are your parents here?” the lifeguard asked the guy gently. “I can get them for you.”

His face instantly took on the look of someone panicking and reaching for a lie—someone who needed help. Something was definitely going on here, and it wasn’t just a kid who swam out too far and didn’t want to get in trouble for it. Rick stepped in.

“He’s with us,” he said. “Thank you so much for helping him. Man, I told you not to go out that deep!”

“Sorry,” the guy said weakly. He had an accent Rick couldn’t place.

“Are you their caretaker or something?” the lifeguard asked, looking from Babs’ underdeveloped legs to the guy on the ground. “You should have kept a better eye on him—”

“Uh, excuse you, Rick’s my boyfriend, not my  _ caretaker _ . And  _ he’s _ our friend,” she added, gesturing to the guy on the ground. “Thanks for your help, but we can take it from here.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean..” The lifeguard trailed off uncomfortably. “Uh, I should get back to watching the beach. Be more careful next time, okay?” She left before they could answer.

“Thank you,” the guy said to Rick when the lifeguard had left.

“Sure,” Rick said. “I’m Rick, this is Babs. Is there someone on the beach you’re trying to avoid, or…?”

He’d been  _ way _ out there. Rick wasn’t convinced he’d started out on the beach at all.

“No, I came here alone,” he said. “My name is Jackson.” What the heck was that accent? Greek, maybe? He sat up, which was clearly a significant exertion despite the fact that he was nearly as muscular as Rick was.

“My dad’s going to be wondering where we are,” Babs said. “And he’s got snacks and water and stuff. He always packs way too much. We could bring you some.”

“That would be kind of you,” Jackson said. “I don’t think I will be moving from this spot for a while.”

“We’ll be right back,” Rick said, then paused and craned his neck to look up at Babs. “Or I could leave you here?”

“Nah, let’s go,” she said. “If you’ll be okay here?”

“I will be fine,” Jackson said.

“Okay, I give up,” Babs said once Jackson was out of earshot. “It’s impossible for you to take a normal vacation that isn’t a cover for some kind of mystery.”

“Told you,” Rick said.


	4. Catwoman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if anyone read this during the minute or two it was a chapter from Children of Krypton instead of Capes and Cowls and got confused. *facepalm*
> 
> CN: kinky sex, details in the endnotes

Selina’s paycheck for stress-testing the Museum of Modern Art’s security system was actually smaller than the estimate they gave her for the cost to repair the damage Batman had caused. She’d anticipated that something like that might happen and brought her checkbook with her, but still, it was  _ extremely _ irritating. He’d better have been serious about paying her back.

...although honestly, even if he wasn’t, it was worth it. George probably hadn’t been able to distinguish any emotion on Batman’s face, but she had a lot of practice reading that chin. He’d been shocked, and then actually  _ embarrassed _ . She’d gotten one over on Batman! It really had been too long.

He wasn’t in her apartment when she got there, but that was okay; it was still early for him. She stripped out of her costume and took a hot shower, reveling in the ache in her muscles. She’d kept in shape in prison, but nothing gave her quite the same aches as burglary (or simulated burglary, in this case). She sort of wished the museum had one of those fields of lasers you had to crawl and flip and squeeze through, but they were pretty out of style these days.

She heard the window open while she was drying off, and smiled. She couldn’t have timed that any better if she’d tried. Should she go out in a towel, or just naked? He’d seen her naked plenty of times at this point, but he hadn’t seen her one towel-slip away from naked. That might be even more distracting.

Catwoman dried her hair, wrapped a fluffy white towel around herself, and went out to meet the Bat.

“You baited me,” he accused her as soon as she stepped out—but she saw his head twitch, his gaze moving to where the corner of the towel was tucked in, and with him, that was a victory.

“I told you nothing criminal was going to happen, and asked you not to be there,” she said. “It’s not my fault you don’t trust me.”

“Not your fault? You were a criminal for years—”

“And we never would have met if I hadn’t been,” she pointed out. An airtight argument, in her opinion. She had no regrets. “Besides, I gave most of it back.”

“You gave  _ some _ of it back.”

“And the rest of it either got fenced a long time ago, or is now past the statute of limitation.” She grinned. So many pretties, hidden away until her sentence was over and now unprosecutable. “I had to be sure  _ something _ good would come of that prison stay.”

“And now you’re doing security consulting?” He sounded skeptical.

“Getting a job looks good to the parole board,” she said. “And you said it yourself: I always did it for the thrill, not the money. It’s a bit  _ less _ of a thrill when I know that getting caught just means I’ll get paid less, but it’s still pretty good.”

“If you’re trying to make me trust you, intentionally baiting me into missing part of my patrol is a terrible way to do it,” he informed her.

“Well, terrible as in less likely to succeed than other methods, maybe,” she conceded. “But it was fun.”

“Next time, actually tell me  _ why _ you want me to avoid a place,” he said.

“And you’ll take my word for it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.

“No, I’ll find out whether the police have been notified.”

“You really should get an email address or something,” she told him, relaxing. He didn’t trust her, but at least he didn’t lie to her; she wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said yes. “Then the museum staff or whoever could notify you themselves. Oh, and speaking of you needing to be easier to track down, my pay tonight was  _ negative  _ thanks to your dramatic entrance. Are you actually planning to pay me back? Or would that cut into your making-everything-bat-themed budget too much?” She didn’t like thinking about where he got all his gear; it took away from the mystique too much. As far as she was concerned, his superpower was spontaneously manifesting bat-themed gadgets and vehicles.

“I’ll pay you back,” he said. “Getting the money tonight would be logistically difficult. I’ll bring it to  you tomorrow night.”

“Crime permitting, I assume,” she said. “That would be four nights in a row of us seeing each other. Unprecedented. I’m going to start thinking you  _ like _ me or something if you’re not careful.”

“I like you.”

“Oh!” Selina put a hand to her forehead and leaned backwards, pretended to swoon. “Such sweet words! Your declaration of passion has me overcome! Where’s my fainting couch?” Actually, she was sort of touched. For him, that was a notably unguarded statement.

“It’s not as if you’ve verbalized whatever feelings you may have for me,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Like that wouldn’t scare you off for good,” she said dismissively.

“Additional data wouldn’t change the situation, only increase my understanding of it,” he said. He really talked like a robot sometimes. “Having more information would make me more comfortable with this situation, not less.”

“Well,  _ obviously _ I’m in love with you, you big dork,” she said, hands on her hips. “Don’t let it go to your head. It’s not an exclusive club. Are you telling me you couldn’t tell? Some detective.”

“I knew it was possible,” he said. His voice sounded strained, like he was only just keeping the emotion out of it. What emotion, she couldn’t tell. “I also knew it was possible that you enjoy having sex with me and matching wits with me, but don’t actually feel… as much affection for me as I do for you.”

She actually was taken aback by that.

“It’s getting too feelings-y in here,” she declared to cover her surprise. She started playing with the tucked-in corner of her towel, and his head snapped towards her hand’s motion like a cat to a laser pointer. “You should leave the suit on when you fuck me tonight. Like that first time I sucked you off.”

“I’ll hurt you,” he said, clearly intending it to be a warning, but she could hear the hint of hunger in his voice.

“I know,” she said, and dropped the towel.

Kissing him when he had the cowl off was nice because it made her feel like he was actually getting closer to trusting her, in spite of that second mask he wore under it. Kissing him when he had the cowl  _ on _ was like kissing an unstoppable force, the edges scraping against her cheeks while his teeth scraped against her lips. His hands were hard in the gauntlets, and she knew that even in the heat of the moment he’d never accidentally jab her with one of the sharp points on his arms—what were those for, anyway, catching swords?—but having a potentially deadly weapon up against her bare skin turned her on.  _ He _ was a potentially deadly weapon.

She bent over the edge of the bed while he got his cock out and a condom on, and then he was pressed up behind her, hard armor slamming against her ass with every thrust.

“Hold me down,” she begged, “Please, please hold me down,” and he obliged, roughly pulling her arms behind her back and holding them there one-handed like he was about to cuff her. Fuck, she was wet,  _ so _ wet, she’d been wet ever since she pulled on the Catwoman suit knowing she was actually going out to use her skills. She was  _ too _ wet, not enough friction; his cock should be the focus, the centerpiece of this delicious spread of sensations, but she was too slippery to feel it as much as she wanted to. She wanted it to  _ hurt _ .

“Put it in my ass, please, please,” she moaned, and he paused.

“Let me go get lube—”

“You don’t need it, you’re lubed up from my pussy,” she said. “You’re dripping with it, I know you are.”

“I should open you up first—”

“I told you I want you to hurt me!” she nearly yelled. “I swear, Batman, if you don’t put your cock in my ass right now I’m going back to a life of crime.”

He pulled out and rubbed the head of his cock right where she wanted it, but leaned over her instead of putting it in.

“I don’t respond well to threats,” he said. “Want to try again?”

“Fine,  _ fine _ , I wasn’t going to do it,  _ please _ fuck me in the ass and I’ll do anything you want, I’ll go out in public with your come on my face, I’ll take out an ad in the paper saying you’re the best fuck in the world, I’ll go toe-to-toe with Killer Croc, just put it in my ass right n-augh!”

And then it was perfect, his cock pounding into her, his balls smacking her vulva obscenely with every thrust, him dark and tall and armored above her holding her down effortlessly; he was all the danger of a dark Gotham night and he was pounding her into the mattress.

His other hand, the one that wasn’t holding her down, came around to press against her clit, and the touch of that cold, hard armor sent her over the edge, coming and screaming and thrashing because no matter how hard she thrashed she couldn’t escape him. He was so tightly inside her that she could feel every pulse of his cock as he came, even through the condom, and it hurt so perfectly she thought she could die.

He pulled out, tossed the condom into the trashcan on the other side of the room with perfect accuracy, and then collapsed half-on the bed next to her. She would have laughed at the sight of Batman, in full regalia, lying on her comforter if she wasn’t still recovering from that magnificent fuck.

“I’m positive I came here tonight to yell at you,” he said accusingly.

“Isn’t fucking me better?” she panted. “We can say you were punishing me if you want. I don’t mind.”

“Punishing you by doing things you were literally begging me to do?” He sounded amused. “Speaking of which, please don’t do any of the things you said you’d do for me.”

“I don’t even remember what I said I’d do,” she assured him. “Hey, you do actually like it like that, right? You’re not just doing what I want? Because I can dom, I just like subbing better.”

Batman snorted. It was almost a laugh.

“I don’t think I could sub if I tried,” he said. “Fucking you is perfect.”

Selina smiled and rolled over so she could sit up and stretch. Batman apparently took that as his cue to stand up and set his body armor to rights. She did a heroic job of not snickering at the sight of him all Batsuited-up except for his flaccid penis hanging out. It was hot when he had an erection, but now he was just flopping.

“Think you’ll ever stay the night?” she asked.

“Stranger things have happened,” he said noncommittally.

“Do I have to wait for you to retire and give the cowl to Robin before I get to see your face?”

“I don’t expect to live long enough to retire,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I suppose when I started I didn’t think I’d make it to eleven years.”

“Well.” That was a mood-killer. “You can always call me if you need extra backup, okay?”

“Even though you know it won’t be enough to make me trust you?”

“Having you trust me would be nice. Keeping you alive is better.” Okay, it was getting  _ way _ too serious. “I’m not into necrophilia.”

“That means a lot,” he said, and he sounded surprisingly sincere. He bent to kiss her before heading towards the window. “Good night, Catwoman.”

“Good night,” she said, and he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN details: sex in body armor, begging, being held down facedown, anal without enough prep


	5. Oracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: implied child abuse

Barbara’s dad was 100% in Vacation Mode, and she deeply approved. He was lounging in a fold-out chair under their beach umbrella, reading a biography. For reasons she couldn’t comprehend, he loved biographies. This one appeared to be Lex Luthor’s autobiography, which was even  _ more _ confusing, but at least he was having fun.

“Hey, kids!” he said when they walked up. “Having fun?”

“I never knew how much I would love being a chair,” Rick said solemnly. “I think I’ve found my true calling.”

Barbara bopped him lightly on the head.

“We made a friend who forgot to bring snacks,” she told her dad. “And I know you brought enough for, like, six people, so I told him we’d share.”

“So instead of having him come here with you, you’re going to make Rick carry you and the snacks?” he asked, amused.

“I need to know how much carrying capacity my chair has,” she said.

“Do you think you could hand me the snacks, Mr. Gordon?” Rick asked.

“Sure, sure.” Her dad stood to hand Rick the insulated bag full of water bottles and food, but stopped. “Actually, maybe I should give this to Barb so you can still hold onto her legs.”

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” Barbara agreed.

It couldn’t have been super comfortable for Rick to carry her around for this long, especially now that the food bag in her hand was smacking against his chest with each step he took, but he didn’t complain. Barbara figured he went through worse in training.

She’d sort of expected Jackson to be gone when they got back, his apparent exhaustion notwithstanding, but he was sitting right where they left him. He gave them a tired smile when he saw them.

“Put me down,” she told Rick, and he set her next to Jackson, then sat facing them. She opened up the bag and offered Jackson a water bottle.

“Ah, no thank you. I’m much more hungry than I am thirsty,” he said.

“If you say so.” That seemed weird to her; sun and saltwater definitely made her thirsty. She handed the bottle to Rick instead and started looking through the food. “Let’s see, we’ve got string cheese, oranges, grapes, and sandwiches. I think there’s two turkey and provolone, two roast beef and swiss, and two ham and American.”

“Um…” Jackson looked overwhelmed by the options. “Grapes?”

“Here you go.” She gave him a bunch of red grapes, and pulled out a water bottle and a roast beef and swiss sandwich for herself. “Rick?”

“Turkey and provolone, please,” he said, and she gave him one. “You’re not from around here, are you, Jackson?”

“I am on vacation,” he said guardedly. He ate a grape cautiously, then started wolfing the rest of them down.

“Us too,” Rick said. His voice was casual, but Barbara could tell he was examining Jackson closely. There was definitely something strange about the guy. “We’re from Gotham. What about you?”

Jackson didn’t answer until he’d finished off his grapes.

“You wouldn’t have heard of it,” he said finally.

“Jackson.” Rick leaned forward. “I want to help you out here. Both of us do. We’re not going to rat you out or anything. But I’m pretty sure you didn’t get into the water from the beach—at least, not from this one. I think you swam here. And maybe I was seeing things, but I’m pretty sure you have gills.”

“That’s absurd,” Jackson said without conviction. Now that Barbara looked closer, he definitely had some strange lines on his neck. “Humans don’t have gills.”

“Not usually, no,” Rick agreed. “Are you human?”

Jackson looked torn.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Barbara interjected. “You want a sandwich?”

“Yes, please,” he said. He didn’t specify, so she handed him a ham and American. He devoured it like he had the grapes.

“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Rick conceded, “but if you need help, it’ll be easier for us to help you if we know what’s going on.”

“I suppose I do need help,” Jackson reluctantly admitted when he finished his sandwich. “I didn’t realize how far from shore I was. I will need a place to rest tonight.”

“No problem,” Rick said. “Babs, you okay if I leave you here for a minute? My phone and stuff are with your dad.”

“Go ahead,” she said, and he jogged off.

“Why did he need your permission?” Jackson asked.

“Because I’m the queen of the beach,” Barbara snarked, her goodwill towards the kid evaporating. Like he hadn’t noticed she couldn’t get around without Rick. (Or her chair, obviously, but that was back at the car.)

“Oh.” Jackson looked taken aback. “I apologize. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

Barbara squinted at him. He seemed entirely serious.

“Are you fucking with me?” she asked.

“Ah… no?” he answered uncertainly.

“Okay, you actually are an alien or something,” Barbara said, and shook her head. Fine, she would act like he wasn’t making fun of her unless it was proven otherwise. “I’m not really queen of the beach. There isn’t any such thing. He asked because I can’t walk, so with him gone, I’m stuck here.”

“You can’t walk?” Jackson asked, shocked. “But you live on land!”

“...yeeeeees? Where else—hang on, are you a merman? You have to tell me if you’re a merman, otherwise it’s entrapment.” The joke was sort of a reflex, to be honest.

“If I was, would you tell anyone?” he asked seriously. He looked around, apparently confirming that no one nearby was listening to their conversation. Barbara doubted anyone could hear it over the sounds of the waves and of children shouting.

“I’d tell Rick,” she said immediately. Wait, was he actually a mermaid? Was this some kind of  _ Little Mermaid _ situation where he’d traded something-or-other for legs? “Rick would probably want to tell, uh, his dad. But it wouldn’t go beyond the three of us. We’re good at keeping secrets, trust me.”

“I had it all planned out,” Jackson said. “I’d swim to land, come ashore without anyone noticing, and then find somewhere private to contact Atlantis. But I didn’t realize how far we were from shore, or how much more difficult swimming near shore is. Waves are much easier to deal with in the open ocean, and there are no rip tides.”

“Atlantis,” Barbara repeated flatly. “You’re telling me Atlantis is real?”

“Atlantis is real?” Rick asked. She hadn’t noticed him approaching. Sure, she was a little distracted by the whole merman thing, but she ought to get him and B to give her lessons on situational awareness or something.

“Atlantis is real,” Jackson confirmed wearily. “I am half-Atlantean, on my mother’s side. She named me Kaldur'ahm, but my father calls me Jackson. Babs assured me that you would tell no one but your father, and that he would keep the secret. Surface-dwellers are not supposed to know about it.”

“B’s been tracking patterns in unexplained ocean events for years,” Rick said. “He’ll be glad to have some confirmation. That’s, uh—B’s basically my dad.”

“My father also suspected the existence of Atlantis,” Jackson said. “He managed to deduce the location of Xebel, an Atlantean city, and dove there in pursuit of wealth and fame. Instead he was imprisoned for life. My mother fell in love with him. I lived in Xebel until I was five years old. My father broke out of prison and stole a vehicle to escape the city entirely. He took me with him. He has been waging a one-man war against Atlantis ever since.”

“Why didn’t he go public?” Rick asked.

“The Atlanteans are very cautious. In addition to his imprisonment, he had a geas laid on him, to make him unable to speak to any surface-dweller of Atlantis’ existence. The Atlanteans accepted me as one of their own, and did not place any such restriction on me. I believe he hoped to use me as his mouthpiece once I was old enough that people would believe me,” Jackson explained. “I loved Xebel, and my mother. My father is not a good man, and I do not wish to help him. I could not escape directly to an Atlantean city; he always kept me locked in my room when we were near one. But he did not expect me to try to escape to land.”

“He sounds like an asshole,” Barbara said. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. How can we help?”

“You have helped, with the food,” he said. “Now I need rest and privacy, so that I can send a message to Atlantis.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem,” Rick said. “I booked you a room at the hotel we’re staying at.”

Sometimes Barbara forgot that Rick didn’t have an allowance; he had access to Bruce Wayne’s unlimited credit card instead. Goddamn rich boy.

“That was very kind of you,” Jackson said.

“No problem. I figured you didn’t have ID on you, and I don’t know your last name anyway, so it’s in my name,” he said. “I’ll have to check you in. But after that, it’s all yours. I booked it through the rest of the week, in case you ended up wanting to go back to Gotham with us, so there’s no rush.”

“I may need a few days,” Jackson admitted. “I must recover my strength, and then I do not know how long it will take for someone to respond to my message and come get me.”

“How’re you going to send a message?” Barbara asked. If there was a secret mermaid internet, she was  _ so _ getting in on that.

“Ah… I have been told that many surface-dwellers are unaware that magic exists…” he said.

“We know about magic,” Rick assured him. “I mean, neither of us are mages, but B’s friends with one.”

“There is a great deal of magic in Atlantis,” Jackson said longingly. “I have had very little instruction in its use, since my father is no mage, but I know enough to send a message.”

“Will you need any supplies for that?” Rick asked.

“I should not,” Jackson said. “You are both being very generous. I have no way to repay you…”

“Helping people is kind of a thing we do,” Barbara said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Although, once you’re back home, if you could convince some Atlanteans to get in touch with B, that would be awesome,” Rick added. “He could definitely help you if you need anything from the, uh, surface world.”

“I doubt they would agree,” Jackson said apologetically. “They have never trusted surface-dwellers, and my father’s actions over the last few years have only deepened that mistrust. But I can petition the king.”

“Would they let you bring a secure way to contact us with you?” Barbara asked. She’d brought some of her Oracle stuff with her, of course, just in case—although she’d thought it was just in case Batman needed them, not just in case of mermen.

“I can bring it, but they may destroy it.”

“Well, ask them not to and we’ll go from there,” Rick said. “You think you’re up to walking? Do you need more food?”

“I believe so, but more food would be appreciated,” Jackson admitted.

“Come on, let’s bring this stuff back to my dad and then get my chair and hit the boardwalk,” Barbara said. “We can introduce you to some surface world delicacies, like pizza and soft serve.”

Rick knelt down in front of her so she could get on his back, and she tried not to resent Jackson’s curious stare.

“What is a boardwalk?” Jackson asked.

“Buddy, you’re about to find out,” Rick said, lifting her easily. Damn, all this secret magical undersea kingdom stuff had distracted her from appreciating his muscles.

Jackson got up, picking up the snack bag. That was polite of him.

“Guess you’re going to meet my dad,” Barbara said. “Don’t worry, he’s pretty chill.”

“If he asks, tell him you’re from Metropolis,” Rick suggested. “And then if he says anything about Meteors and Knights, just tell him you don’t follow sports.”

Jackson nodded solemnly.

“I will follow your lead,” he said.


	6. Bruce

Last night, Catwoman tricked Batman into humiliating himself, then told him she loved him, then begged him to fuck her in the ass, a request he had enthusiastically accommodated. This evening, Bruce was having an entirely friendly dinner with Selina and her girlfriend.

Sometimes it was a little hard to keep things compartmentalized. It would’ve been easier if Batman was the only one attracted to her, but Bruce wanted her too, and he had all those memories to draw on. And of course, Selina herself reveled in her infamy. She was wearing dangerously high heels and a short black dress with a low V neckline framing a necklace with a silver cat pendant, just to rub it in. (Bruce was wearing a dark brown suit with a yellow shirt and no tie. He avoided wearing black as much as he could.)

“It’s nice to have the cat out of the bag, you know?” she said, toying with the pendant. “Nothing shows you who your real friends are like seeing who sticks by you when you’re outed as an infamous criminal.”

“Seems like a bit of an extreme method,” Bruce observed.

“I like extreme,” she said, and smiled.

“How have you been, Maven?” Bruce asked, turning to their silent companion. Maven’s preferred mode of dress always seemed to be “librarian chic,” regardless of the setting; big, round glasses, straight brown hair in a neat ponytail, knee-length skirt, high-collared blouse, kitten heels. The skirt and shoes were navy blue and the blouse white, on this occasion; she must have a closet full of them, because every time he saw her she was wearing nearly the same outfit in different severe colors. She’d greeted him and she’d ordered dinner, but other than that, she seemed perfectly happy to let Selina dominate the conversation. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since the day Selina was released.”

“I’ve been well,” she said, smiling slightly at him. “It’s good to have her back.”

“Your life was much too boring without me, wasn’t it, dear?” Selina asked.

“I still live in Gotham,” Maven said drily. “It never gets  _ too _ boring.”

“Speaking of which, did I tell you I got a new job, Bruce?” Selina asked.

“No, you didn’t! Congratulations,” he said. “What’s the job?”

“Maven gave me the idea and the contacts,” Selina said. Maven was an efficiency specialist. “I’m a freelance security specialist, and I had my first client last night. The Modern Art Museum paid me to break in.”

“They  _ paid _ you to—oh, I see,” Bruce said, feigning confusion and realization. “So they could find the holes in their security?”

“Yep! I’m a white hat catburglar now,” she said, grinning. The term was from hacking; white hat hackers found holes in network security so the owners of the network could make it more secure, as opposed to black hat hackers who did it for personal gain. “Want the security at your mansion tested? I’d give you a discount.”

“I’ll think about it.” There was no way in hell. She’d notice that his security was considerably tighter than anyone could have reasonably expected. “Have you got business cards? I could pass some around.”

“You didn’t  _ actually _ get paid, Selina,” Maven reminded her, while pulling a short stack of business cards out of her purse to hand to Bruce. Of course; Selina’s purse was small and fashionable, while Maven’s was nearly a satchel. Most of Selina’s things must be in Maven’s bag.

“Well, once Batman pays me back I will.” She was looking at Bruce, clearly dying for him to question her statement. God, his life was weird.

“Batman owes you money?” he asked. “What’s he going to do, write you a bat-check?”

“He saw me sneaking into the museum and decided the best way to react was by doing a ton of property damage,” she said with relish. “Crashed in through a skylight.”

“You didn’t get hurt, did you?” Bruce asked.

“We didn’t get in a fight or anything, and none of the glass hit me,” she assured him. “Security came out and yelled at him, and then they charged me the cost of repairing the building. He said he’d pay me back tonight, unless he’s too busy fighting crime and all.”

“It’s weird hearing you talk about him like he’s a regular person,” Bruce said. It was honestly sort of true. “Do you go on dates?”

“He took me crimefighting once. I think that’s basically a bat-date,” she said. “Uh, keep that to yourself, would you? I’m pretty sure my parole board wouldn’t like to hear about vigilantism.”

“I think I can manage that,” he said.

There was something strange about the sounds coming from the kitchen. Less sizzling and chopping, more hushed voices. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Bruce Wayne would notice.

Selina looked at the door to the kitchen for a moment, then appeared to dismiss her concerns and turned back to him. She really needed better training.

“What about you?” she asked. “Any new ladies in your life?”

“Just the usual suspects.” Everyone was still in the middle of their entrees; getting them to leave the restaurant now would be very difficult. He only had a bare minimum of gear on him, and if Selina saw him use any of it, it wouldn’t be hard for her to guess who he was. Maybe he should feign illness? “Well, except Julie. She’s seeing someone exclusively right now. I think he’s a marquis or something.”

“Good on her,” Selina said. “If you have to be monogamous, at least get a title out of it.”

A waiter opened the door to the kitchen and was immediately pulled inside by someone out of view. There was a dull thump.

“Okay, something’s definitely wrong in the kitchen,” Selina said. She pulled off her shoes and reached into her purse to pull out a small rebreather and a tightly coiled whip—apparently its only contents—and then handed the shoes and empty bag to Maven, who put them in her own, larger purse and handed Selina more practical footwear. “I’m going to go check it out.”

“Scarecrow?” Maven asked, remarkably calmly.

“Could just be a robbery, but I’d rather not find out the hard way,” Selina said. “Bruce, you’ve gotten fear gassed before, right? Just don’t start punching or anything if you suddenly see your worst fear.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, affecting bewilderment at the sudden turn of events.

Selina kissed Maven, then put on the rebreather and approached the kitchen door, whip in hand.

“She’ll be okay,” Maven told Bruce comfortingly. “Selina’s great at improvising.”

“Aren’t you worried about her?” he asked.

“We’ve been together a long time. If she wasn’t risking her life, she wouldn’t be my Selina,” Maven said fondly.

Selina pushed the kitchen door open, staying well out of reach of anyone who might be inside. Whatever she saw made her tense into a combat position. She waved two fingers at Maven—some sort of hand signal—then rushed into the kitchen, rebreather still firmly in place.

“Call 911. Tell the police Scarecrow’s here,” Maven told Bruce authoritatively. Then she stood up.

“Excuse me, everyone,” she called, loudly and firmly enough that the other diners turned to look at her. “Everyone needs to quickly and calmly evacuate the building. There’s an emergency in the kitchen.”

Most of the diners, swayed by her tone and her demeanor, did as she said. Maybe there was some utility to the way she dressed; she looked like she was there to work, possibly a manager or even the owner. Batman could hear the sounds of fighting in the kitchen. Catwoman had to be hugely outnumbered. There had to be some way he could help.

“What are you doing?” an actual manager demanded, running up to Maven. “What emergency? You can’t just tell everyone to leave without paying! Who do you think you are?”

“Scarecrow and Catwoman are having a fight in your kitchen as we speak,” she informed him quietly. “Everyone needs to get out of here now.”

“What? How do you know that?” He’d gone pale.

“Catwoman told me,” she said matter-of-factly.

“And you want me to just take your word for that? Who even  _ are _ you?” He was clearly torn between fear of losing business and fear that the Scarecrow was actually in his kitchen.

“I’m Bruce Wayne,” Bruce said, standing up to butt into the conversation. “She’s telling the truth, and if that’s not enough for you, I guarantee I’ll pay every open bill in the restaurant right now, with 20% tips all around. But we need to  _ go _ .”

He seemed to accept that, and rushed to give orders to a mutinous-looking group of servers. 

“Thanks,” Maven said to Bruce. “Come on, we should leave too.” She turned to walk out, pulling out her phone to call 911 as she did. He could hear her giving a concise and precise description of the situation to the operator. The servers seemed to be cooperating now, probably because of the “20% tips” thing, so he trailed along behind Maven.

Scarecrow’s plan, whatever it had been, was almost certainly foiled at this point. Crane was smart enough to cut his losses and run before the police arrived, but that didn’t mean Selina was safe.

“Everyone’s outside now,” Maven said into the phone. “Most of them are leaving the area. What? Of course I’m not going to tell them to stay. I told you, Scarecrow’s here. Keeping people safe is more important than getting witness statements. Well, it may not be my call to make, but I’m making it. Yes, fine, I’ll stay on the line.” She muted her end.

“You’re handling this well,” Bruce remarked.

“Thanks,” she said. “Wish her damn boyfriend would show up, though. She’s better at sneaking than fighting.”

Was keeping his identity a secret even worth it if it got Selina killed? Scarecrow wouldn’t kill her right away, though. There would be time. Batman could track him down even if he had to tear the city apart to do it.

“You don’t like Batman?” Bruce asked Maven. He needed something to focus on, to help him stay in the driver’s seat. Batman wanted to go charging in.

“He’s probably better for her than burglary was,” she said. “It’s not a good relationship, though: very unequal. She doesn’t even have a way to contact him. He just shows up at her apartment whenever he wants.”

A black sedan came barreling out of the alleyway behind the restaurant, on the side where the kitchen entrance must be. The windows were tinted. He couldn’t see who was inside, couldn’t see whether they had her.

“I think they just left,” Maven said after unmuting her phone. “A black sedan with a covered license plate just drove out of the alley by the kitchen. The windows were tinted; I couldn’t see how many were inside, or verify that Scarecrow was there. It’s possible that they took a hostage. Selina Kyle. Yes, Catwoman. What? No, I told you she was fighting  _ against _ the Scarecrow, not helping him. She was here because we were having dinner here! Yes, me and her. Because she’s my girlfriend.”

Having to defend Selina, and their relationship, appeared to be upsetting Maven more than having to evacuate a restaurant while her girlfriend fought the Scarecrow had. She pinched the bridge of her nose under her glasses, looking as unprofessional as Bruce had ever seen her.

“No, I’m not claiming that I’m Batman,” she said. “We’re in an open relationship, not that it’s any of your concern. Look, just get some officers with gas masks out here to check out the kitchen or I’m going in, fear gas or no. She could be hurt.”

The GCPD’s response time had dramatically improved under Gordon, but they showed a distressing tendency to take their time when it came to anyone considered part of Batman’s “rogues gallery,” apparently in the hope that he’d get there first and they’d just have to pick up the unconscious and/or bound criminals he left behind. It was a tendency Jim was doing his best to discourage, Batman knew, but he couldn’t control absolutely every dispatch personally, especially while he was on vacation.

It took ten more agonizing minutes for the police to show up. Not enough time for fear gas to have lost its potency, or for it to have dissipated from an enclosed space like the kitchen, or Batman would have gone in, identity or no. Maven kept busy keeping the restaurant employees calm; the diners had all left by then.

Bruce walked into a blind alley where he would plausibly have been able to meet Batman or Robin without anyone seeing. He kept a syringe of Scarecrow antitoxin on him at all times, these days. If Selina was still in there, she would need it.

Finally they arrived. It was nearly another ten minutes before two officers in gas masks left the building, leading a cuffed and struggling Selina by the elbows. Bruce didn’t see her rebreather.

“I won’t go back, I won’t!” she was yelling.

Bruce and Maven rushed up to the officers as one.

“Is she under arrest?” Maven demanded. “On what charges? She was  _ helping _ in there—”

“Ma’am, she’s been gassed,” one of the officers said. There were bloody scratch marks on his face. Selina liked to keep her nails sharp. “This was the only way to get her out of the building.”

“But she isn’t under arrest?” Bruce asked.

“We’d like to take her in for questioning.”

“I’m calling her lawyer,” Maven said, pulling out her phone.

“That’s fine, ma’am, but for now she’s going to have to come with us.” The officer who wasn’t speaking started pushing Selina’s head down to get her into the car.

“Hang on,” Bruce said, and held up the syringe. “I saw Robin in the alley over there. He said this would help.” Better to say it was Robin; claiming that Bruce and Batman had been in the same place at the same time while no one was looking would only increase suspicion.

“Don’t know why he didn’t just do it himself,” the officer grumbled, but he stopped trying to get Selina in the car so he could take the syringe and inspect it. Batman didn’t put Bat-symbols on the syringes or anything, but they were all clearly labeled and dated, so it should have been recognizable if the officer had seen one before. Apparently he had, because he uncapped it and plunged it into Selina’s arm, and her struggling slowed, then stopped.

“Hang on,” Maven said into the phone, and rushed over. “Selina? Sweetheart, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“Aside from being cuffed,” she said, and smiled weakly at Maven. “Nobody else got hurt?”

“Nope,” Maven confirmed. “You saved the day, Catwoman.”

Selina grinned, and leaned up to kiss her girlfriend a little too intensely for public viewing. Or maybe Bruce’s libido was just skewing his estimation.

He didn’t accompany Maven and Selina to the station. Selina’s lawyer was good; she would most likely be out that night. Batman went to her apartment after his patrol.

She was sleeping. Maven was awake, sitting in the same chair Selina had occupied the first night he saw her after her release, where he couldn’t see her until he’d already entered the apartment.

“She’s tired,” she informed him without preamble. There was a simmering anger under her calm voice. “She did your job today, you know.”

“I know,” he said.

“She wouldn’t have had to if she had a way to contact you.” Maven paused, choosing her words carefully. “I won’t say you’re worse for her than burglary was, but you’re not good to her. This isn’t a game anymore, it’s a relationship. Maybe you never planned for that to happen, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have responsibilities, and you aren’t meeting them.”

“I know,” he said again. Standing in front of her while she chastised him made him feel like he was being taken to task by one of  his old teachers, mostly because he knew she was right. “I’m working on it. I know it isn’t what you mean, but I have the money for her, from last night.”

“I’ll give it to her,” Maven said. “She should sleep.”

He handed her the roll of bills. She took it with a raised eyebrow.

“Seized criminal assets?” she asked. He didn’t answer. “Fine, you don’t need to tell me anything. But tell her. At  _ least _ give her a way to contact you. You should’ve done that two years ago.”

Reluctantly, he pulled out a spare communicator and handed it to her.

“There won’t always be an answer, and it won’t always be me. But I’ll answer if I can. That’s the best I can do.”

“No it isn’t,” Maven said. “But it’s a step.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maven is from the DCAU. She was Selina's "best friend and secretary," but listen, they were totally doing it. I gave her the last name "Lewis" after Mary McDonald Lewis, who voiced Maven. _Somebody_ around here needed to be sensible and good at relationships. XD


	7. Robin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: ableism

The first order of business was getting Jackson some actual clothes; wearing nothing but the bottom half of a wetsuit wasn’t exactly unobtrusive. He ended up in dark blue swim trunks, black flip-flops, and a t-shirt that Rick had been unable to resist buying; it said “Come to the Jersey Shore! It’s not Gotham!” and had a picture of a surfing Batman on it, wearing the cowl and bat-print swim trunks, with chest hair sculpted in the shape of a bat. It was the greatest thing Rick had ever seen, and he really hoped he’d be able to take it back to Gotham with him.

Sadly, even the greatest t-shirt of all time didn’t solve all logistical problems. Rick was used to having B around, in one guise or another; as Bruce Wayne, he was great at drawing attention, and as Batman, he was great at avoiding it. Either one would have made sneaking Jackson around easier.

And of course, if Rick had been there as Robin, he could have enlisted the Commissioner's help without raising too many questions. But he was there as the Commissioner's daughter's boyfriend, not as Batman's sidekick.  Even just having Jackson join them for the trip back to the hotel would raise questions. What were the odds that this guy they just met was staying in the same hotel they were? Where were his parents?

Having all these concerns in the back of his head didn't keep Rick from enjoying introducing Jackson to pizza and caramel corn and arcade games, though. And having Jackson around didn't keep him from enjoying Babs' company, for that matter. Having the chance to introduce Jackson to the surface world seemed to be distracting her from the assholes who stared at her big, sandproof wheelchair; she was about as cheerful as he'd ever seen her, talking quietly but animatedly to Jackson.

"So if your dad hated Atlantis, why didn't he teach you anything about the surface world?" she asked after explaining pizza and video games to Jackson, who enjoyed the former but seemed entirely baffled by the latter.

"He taught me some things," Jackson said. "Geography, politics, military tactics and so forth. But we mostly ate MREs, so I didn't learn much about the food, and he certainly didn't care if I knew anything about what surface-dwellers do for fun."

"He isn't just planning on going after Atlantis, is he?" Rick asked. "He wants to set Atlantis and the surface world against each other, and then try to make some sort of power grab in the chaos."

"You're probably right," Jackson said, looking unhappy. "He didn't tell me about his larger plans, but that fits up with what I suspect of him."

"Well, we'll have an eye out for him now," Babs said comfortingly. "We may not be mermaid wizards, but we kick plenty of butt. Uh, do you know idioms? That one means we defeat our enemies."

"I am familiar with it," Jackson said, amused. "Father's ship has a crew of surface-dwellers. They did not introduce me to surface foods or entertainment, but I learned some notably colorful language from them."

"I think our best bet for getting you into the hotel and avoiding Babs' dad would be for you and I to take a taxi back now," Rick said. Mr. Gordon had left them to enjoy the boardwalk while he went back to the hotel room for a nap. He seemed to be trying to fit a year's worth of relaxation into a few days. "I'll get you checked in and all, and then I'll take a taxi back. But we should go soon, so that I'll be here when he gets back to pick us up."

"Ugh, I want to argue, but you're probably right," Babs said, grimacing. "It'll add a lot of time and fuss if we have to deal with this damn beach chair, and dad will be more likely to catch us. "

"Sorry," Rick said. He felt pretty shitty for not managing to come up with a plan that kept Babs with him, but everything she said was true.

"Whatever," she said. "I'll just brush up my mad DDR skills."

"Please don't hack the arcade machines," Rick said.

"What, I'm not allowed to have any fun?"

Jackson was quiet in the taxi, clearly uncomfortable with the proximity of the driver. The half-Atlantean wasn't any good at hiding his feelings, but Rick was pretty sure the driver wouldn't come to any conclusions more nefarious than "these are a couple of awkward gay teenagers on a date," which worked fine as a cover story. Rick tipped the driver well, but not well enough that they'd be too memorable.

The risky part was while they were actually in the lobby of the hotel. Mr. Gordon could have come down any minute, and he would have been very confused. It took longer than it should have, because the concierge was reluctant to give a couple of teenagers a hotel room, even though Rick's debit card cleared fine.

"Do you want to call my dad?" Rick asked finally. "I've got his permission."

"You can't just put me on the phone with an adult and expect this to all be fixed," the concierge said condescendingly.

"Okay, so cancel my reservation and I'll have my dad call and book a room in his name, with his card," Rick suggested. "With me and Jackson as permitted occupants or whatever. Would that work?"

"I suppose..."

"Great, I'll just call him." Rick nodded for Jackson to follow him and went to a corner of the lobby where they wouldn't be in the way—and where, with any luck, Mr. Gordon wouldn't see them even if he did come downstairs.

"Rick, you cannot tell him in front of all these people," Jackson hissed.

"Relax," Rick said, waving a hand at him. "It won't be a problem, I promise."

The phone rang for a while before B picked up.

"Rick? I'm in a meeting," he said. "Is everything alright?"

"Hi, Dad," Rick said. B would understand that meant they had an audience. "The concierge isn't letting me and Jackson check into our hotel room. Apparently you need to book the room, and have us listed as people who are allowed to stay in it. Or me, at least. Jackson doesn't have his license yet, so he can't show ID anyway."

"Well that's a pain," B said. "Can it wait?"

"I mean, it's not exactly an emergency, but Babs is waiting for us to finish checking in so we can go back to the boardwalk with her," he said. "Otherwise she might end up stuck with just her dad for a while, and I know she'd hate that."

"Right, of course," B said. "What's the name of the hotel? I'll grab my laptop and make the reservation now."

Rick gave him the information.

"And... there we go," B said after a moment of typing. "Say hi to Jackson for me. And Barbara, if you get the chance."

"Thanks, dad, you're the best," Rick said, laying it on thick enough that he made B snort with amusement. "Talk to you later."

"I'll give you a call after work," B said. "But I'd better get back to that meeting for now. Bye."

They had to wait for a few agonizing moments at the concierge's desk for the reservation to go through, but eventually it did, and the concierge reluctantly gave them two room keys. Rick supposed he ought to admire the man for not fawning as soon the name "Bruce Wayne" became a part of the equation, but honestly, just then it would have been helpful.

"Okay, here you go," Rick said, letting Jackson into the room and closing the door behind him. "Bathroom's in here, and if you get hungry... here we go. Room service menu. Order anything you want, okay? Except the drinks on this list, those you'd need ID for. I've gotta get back to Babs."

"Before you go—your father," Jackson said. "He didn't ask any questions about you suddenly needing a room for me?"

"Oh, he'll ask as soon as we've got some privacy," Rick explained. "But he knew something was up and he couldn't ask just then. Plus he might've been around people he couldn't ask in front of, I don't know."

"The same way that you pretended that you knew me, on the beach," Jackson said. "How did you know to do that? Why did you do it? This cannot possibly be how all surface-dwellers behave."

"No, definitely not," Rick said with a laugh. "I'll explain that later too, okay? Well, I'll explain as much as he lets me. I really do need to get back to the boardwalk, though. If Mr. Gordon shows up and I'm not there and Babs has no explanation, I'm going to look like the worst boyfriend ever."

"Alright," Jackson said, still looking bewildered. "Thank you."

"Hey, you made a trip to New Jersey actually interesting," Rick said. Getting to spend so much time with Babs had done that, actually, but Jackson didn't need to know that. "I should be thanking you."

He managed to make it back to the boardwalk fifteen minutes before Mr. Gordon was supposed to pick them up, and even managed to find Babs right away. Unfortunately, that was because she was having a very loud argument with an older woman.

"Lady, I'm seventeen," she was nearly shouting, her face red with anger and embarrassment. "I can be on the damn boardwalk by myself!"

"There's no need to take that tone," the woman said. "I was only trying to help."

"If I need help, I'll ask for it, okay? Until then, leave me the fu—"

"Babs! Hey! I'm back!" Rick said, inserting himself between the two.

"Are you the one who left her alone here?" the woman demanded.

"How many times today am I going to have to tell people that he's my boyfriend, not my fucking babysitter?" Babs demanded, with a glare for Rick. Okay, he shouldn't have interrupted her.

"Heeey, maybe we should de-escalate this situation before your dad gets here to pick us up," Rick suggested. "I mean, we wouldn't want him to keep us from hanging out with Jackson later, right?"

"Fine," Babs grumbled. "Let's get some ice cream or something."

Rick resisted the urge to shoot an apologetic look at the woman she'd been arguing with as they headed towards the nearest ice cream stand. It was her fault, after all.

"I hope you weren't stuck arguing with assholes the whole time I was gone," he said when they were out of earshot.

"Nah, just for a little while at the end," she said. "You took forever, though."

Rick started telling her about the trouble at the hotel, but fell silent when Mr. Gordon pulled up in the rental van.

"You kids have enough fun in the sun yet?" he asked.

"Yeah, I could go for some fun in the air conditioning," Babs said. Rick helped her into the van, then helped her dad load the chair in the back.

He couldn't help but reflect that normally, the vacations he went on were intended from the start to be a cover for something else; he didn't find the "something else" partway through the first day and then have to build a cover as he went, and he definitely didn't have Commissioner Gordon breathing down his neck. But none of his previous vacations had included Babs either, so really, it was more than a fair trade.


	8. Oracle

Rick, Barbara, and her dad were all in one hotel room. Barbara and her dad each got real beds; Rick took the fold-out couch without complaint. Barbara wondered if her dad was trying to give him some bullshit test to make sure he wasn't too much of a pampered rich kid.

Honestly, she almost wanted to tell her dad how Rick actually spent a lot of his nights. But she knew that everything Oracle and Robin and Batman did was illegal, really, and there was only so much her dad would be willing to turn a blind eye to. Especially if it meant putting her in danger, even indirectly.

Anyway, they got the salt water and sand off, had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and then hung around in the hotel room, her and Rick on their laptops, her dad still reading that book. She was itching to grill Jackson more on how exactly this whole "hidden undersea civilization" thing worked, but there wasn't much she could do until her dad fell asleep, which was likely to take forever since he'd napped on the beach and was almost as used to night work as she and Rick were. They plotted their escape by IM.

**alwaysbeflipping** : hey

**alwaysbeflipping** : how heavy a sleeper is your dad?

**choose_a_foma** : I dunno, pretty heavy I guess? Why?

**alwaysbeflipping** : im not sure, but I think I can get by on less sleep than you?

**alwaysbeflipping** : so i can stay up until hes sleeping heavy and then wake you up

**alwaysbeflipping** : and we can go chill with the little merman

**choose_a_foma** : omg

**choose_a_foma** : That is probably a super rude thing to call him

**choose_a_foma** : But yeah, I think it makes sense for you to be the one to stay up

**choose_a_foma** : And then I guess if we have to do this tomorrow night, we can switch off?

**alwaysbeflipping** : sounds good

**alwaysbeflipping** : so you go to bed whenever

**alwaysbeflipping** : and i'll wake you up

**choose_a_foma** : Sounds good

**choose_a_foma** : Try not to startle me too much when you wake me up?

**choose_a_foma** : I might make noise if you do.

**choose_a_foma** : And then dad would wake up and it would be awk. ward.

**alwaysbeflipping** : tickle you awake, got it

**choose_a_foma** : Dork.

Barbara considered for a moment, chewing on her knuckle.

**choose_a_foma** : So, this is one-time only permission

**choose_a_foma** : But you can pick me up and put me in my chair when you wake me up.

**choose_a_foma** : It'll probably make the bed creak less than if I did it myself.

**alwaysbeflipping** : understood

"I think I'm gonna turn in," Barbara announced.

"Kind of early for you, isn't it?" her dad asked.

"Yeah, but I think I got too much sun," she said. "Curse your pale Irish genes."

"I told you to put on more sunscreen," he scolded.

"I don't think more sunscreen would've made me less tired, dad," she said.

Changing into her pajamas in the bathroom was a pain, even though her dad had gotten an accessible room. At home, she had everything set up perfectly; here it was sort of set up for a theoretical generic disabled person, so it probably didn't work right for anyone. At least she didn't need help. Rick clearly had to turn a snicker into a cough when she rolled out of the bathroom wearing pajamas with little Superman logos all over them, and she grinned.

It was nice that at this point, she'd maneuvered onto couches and things in front of Rick enough times that she didn't even feel self-conscious about it any more. He'd seen her use her arms to move her legs around plenty of times, and he never stared or anything. 

Sleep took a long time to come. Aside from being excited about talking to Jackson again, she felt hyper-aware that Rick was in the room, even though he was over on the couchbed. She'd never slept in the same room as him before. What if she snored or drooled or something? He wouldn't actually judge her for it, obviously, but it could still make her less attractive to him. You didn't have to be actively judging someone to find them less attractive.

She was almost certainly being silly, but... maybe she wouldn't sleep at all, just to be on the safe side. It wasn't like she couldn't function on too little sleep; she'd gotten caught up in things and accidentally pulled all-nighters a long time before she got pulled into this whole Robin business, and she was always fine at school the next day.

Almost as soon as she made that decision, it seemed like, Rick was gently shaking her awake. When she opened her eyes, he gave her a very quiet kiss on the cheek, so presumably he couldn't be too grossed-out by anything she may have done in her sleep. She could still see a little; her dad must have left the bathroom light on.

Rick mimed picking her up, a questioning look on his face, and she nodded, touched by his double-checking.

What she hadn't quite considered was how it would feel to be lying in bed with him leaning over her, gently pulling the blanket and sheet off of her. He was wearing pajamas too, probably so that she wouldn't be the only one underdressed for their chat with Jackson, but his were grey and silky, with buttons up the front that she could just reach up and undo if she wanted to. She could feel her face burning, and had to fight the urge to pull him down to kiss her. They were on a mission, and besides, her dad was right there. He picked her up, and it was embarrassing how much she liked it.

He was all business, though, getting her into her chair as quickly and quietly as possible, then holding the room door open for her; it had a button for automatic opening, but they'd discovered earlier in the day that doing it that way made noise. He closed it behind them almost silently, but they still didn't talk until they were partway down the hall from the room.

"Jeez, that was worse than sneaking past guys with guns," Rick said. "B never prepared me for girlfriends' dads."

"Was he just training 24/7 when he was our age, or what?" she asked.

"I mean, he doesn't talk about his childhood much or anything, but yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what he was doing," he said. "I know he had some friends, and he probably, you know, fooled around some, but I doubt he actually dated anybody."

"Sort of like you, before you met me?" she asked.

"I've actually dated people," he said. "It's just never been, you know, serious before. Here, this is Jackson's room."

Rick knocked quietly, but there was no answer.

"Maybe he's asleep," Barbara said, disappointed.

"We should check on him anyway," Rick said, pulling out a keycard.

Jackson was not sleeping. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed with his eyes closed and a nine-pointed star sketched in the air in front of him in green light. Barbara could feel the hair on her arms and the back of her neck rise. Yeah, she already had enough evidence that magic was real that it would be silly to deny it—she'd felt the effects of that paranoia spell, and of the amulet she wore to stop it from affecting her—but this was the first time she'd really seen it. The amulets had just looked like weird jewelry. This was undeniably supernatural.

"Jackson?" Rick said quietly.

Jackson opened his eyes, apparently startled, and the green star dissolved into little sparks and then into nothing at all.

"Rick, Barbara," Jackson said. "Come in. I was trying to contact Atlantis, but I'm afraid I don't yet have the strength."

"Green—that's community, right?" Rick asked as he and Barbara entered. "Is it a green spell, or are you a green magician?"

Barbara had gotten a document on different colors of magic from Batman, but honestly she couldn't make a lot of sense out of it, other than "red = bad, black = not actually bad." She suspected that Rick had gotten a more complete document; hers had probably been edited to protect the identity of "Z."

"Both, I suppose," Jackson said, looking surprised. "I am sorry, you said that you knew a mage, but I did not realize you knew so much about magic."

"I can't do any, but I know some," Rick said. "So, here's an idea—we order up a late-night snack from room service, we hang out while we eat it, and then you'll have a little more strength from having gotten a little more food in you, and we'll be a little better friends. Friends are a community, right? So then you can try again with us here, and it should be easier."

"It's worth a try," Jackson said. "I could use a break anyway."

They were in the no-kitchen hours between dinner and breakfast, but Rick managed to get bowls of cereal and drinks sent to the room—coffee for him, tea for Barbara, and hot chocolate for Jackson, since Rick and Barbara both thought he ought to try it.

"Okay," Rick said. "Tell us about Atlantis."

"I was only a child when I left, but I'll tell you what I know," Jackson said. "It is a kingdom that stretches across the oceans of the world, from the capital city in the Atlantic to my birthplace, Xebel, in the Pacific. The cities are protected by the magic of the royal family, which keeps them hidden and dry. I don't know if it is a true history or only a story told to children, but I was told that the city of Atlantis sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago, and the king at the time was able to cast a great spell which changed the people there into what they are now; not quite human, able to breathe water." He rubbed a finger along his gill ridges.

"So Atlanteans don't look any different from us than you do?" Barbara asked. She was somewhat disappointed; she'd been promised mermaids, dammit.

"Some of them look like me," he said. "But there is a great deal of diversity between them, more than there could be between different members of the same species if the species had not been created magically. Some have long, webbed fingers, or scaly skin, or the heads or tails of fish."

Yes! Mermaids confirmed!

"And they imprison surface-dwellers who find out about them?" Barbara asked. "Are they going to come after us?"

"I do not believe so," he said. "Not to imprison you, at least. They may wish to place a geas on you, to keep their secret."

"Yeah, B's not going to go for that," Rick said. "Do you know if they monitor the news or anything from the surface?"

"I believe they do, but I am uncertain," Jackson said. "Why do you ask?"

"B gave me special permission to tell you, and for you to tell the Atlanteans: he's Batman. I'm Robin. Barbara isn't in the news because she's more of a behind-the-scenes person, but she's Oracle." Barbara was shocked that he'd gotten permission for that, until she realized that he'd probably kept Jackson from ever hearing the name 'Bruce' or 'Wayne,' or even 'Grayson.' "We know how to keep a secret, and we can help them if they need it."

"None of those names mean anything to me," Jackson admitted, "but perhaps they will to them. I will remember."

"Good," Rick said, downing the last of the milk from his cereal. "Okay, how can we help with the spell?"

"I am not certain," Jackson admitted. "Simply having you here may be enough."

"Give it a try, then." Barbara said, eager to see more magic.

Jackson nodded and closed his eyes. Frowning with concentration, he sketched a nine-pointed star in the air in front of him again, green light following his fingertip. It was sort of like the afterimages that a sparkler would leave in your eyes, except that it lingered, staying put in front of him like a solid object. He spoke in a language she didn't understand, or even recognize; when she glanced at Rick, he shrugged, apparently not recognizing it either.

Maybe it was Atlantean. Barbara quietly set her chair computer to record her environment; maybe she or B would be able to make something of it later.

When he finished speaking, the star continued to hang in the air in front of him for a moment without anything else appearing to happen. Then the green outline filled with orange light, and another voice spoke in that same unrecognizable language. An incomprehensible conversation followed for a while, but Jackson was smiling the whole time.

"They are going to take me back," he said in English, turning to look at Rick and Babs. "I did it!"

"Awesome," Rick said. "Don't forget to tell them, Batman and Robin would like them to get in touch."

"And the communicator!" Barbara said. "You've got it on you still, right?"

"I have it," he confirmed. "Thank you, my friends. I will not forget this."

He said something else incomprehensible and vanished, along with the green-and-orange star.

“Oh, dammit,” Rick said. “He took the shirt.”


	9. Robin

Rick and Babs made it back down to the room well before Mr. Gordon woke up, thank goodness, and got back into their respective beds without waking him. The rest of the vacation was considerably less eventful, at least in terms of finding Atlanteans washed up on the beach. It was eventful in that Rick got to spend a lot of time with Babs, which was awesome. They even spent some time making out under the boardwalk, despite the somewhat complicated logistics of getting Babs down there. That was especially awesome.

They also got some private conversation in.

"You know, I sort of assumed that you and B didn't have much you could teach me, but I think I was wrong," Babs admitted. They were leaning against one another in the cavelike space under the boardwalk, finished making out for the moment but not quite ready to rejoin the rest of the world.

"Yeah?" Rick asked. "What kind of training were you thinking?"

"Your situational awareness is so much better than mine," she confessed. "And stuff like—I don't know, however you figured out that it would be a good idea to pretend that we knew Jackson. I feel like I've kind of neglected learning, you know, anything that required getting off the computer."

"That's not fair," he objected. "You're great at school, and they don't let you do all your schoolwork on the computer. And you were the one who read the situation and figured out what was the best thing to do with Allison, not me."

"School's easy," she said dismissively. "And I wanted you to tell Allison what was going on because it was the right thing to do, not because I somehow knew it would be the most successful tactic or whatever. How did you know Jackson wasn't going to just be like 'who the hell are you two'?"

"Well, I noticed that something weird was going on with his neck," Rick explained. "I mean, I didn't figure out that he was from a lost race of undersea wizards or whatever, but that was the first sign that something was weird. Plus he was more scared when the lifeguard mentioned looking for his parents than he was when she was bringing him to shore. My guess was abuse, a runaway with unusual scarring on his neck."

"You weren't that far off," she observed.

"We can talk to B about it when we get back, but a lot of that is stuff you learn from experience," Rick admitted. "I don't know how well it could be taught. Well, other than general situational awareness. He can train you on that for sure, but you're definitely not going to enjoy it. Situational awareness training is worse than combat training, and combat training involves getting punched."

"But it could save my life," Babs pointed out. "I can't have you around 24/7."

"You can't?" He fake-pouted, trying to distract both of them—especially himself—from the idea of Babs needing help and him not being around. "But I thought I was your new chair!"

"You're such a dork," she said, affectionately nudging her sandy shoulder against his.

So yeah, that was about all the excitement until the last day of the trip, when they were packing up to head back home.

"So," Mr. Gordon said, "Is your friend Jackson going to be okay without you?"

"What do you mean?" Babs asked. She did a good job of not glancing at Rick, he noticed.

"I assume he's the one Rick got the extra room for," Mr. Gordon said. "You would've mentioned it if there was someone else you knew staying at the hotel, and you wouldn't have snuck outside in your pajamas."

Both of the teenagers were silent for a moment.

"Come on, I'm old, not dead," Mr. Gordon said. "At first I thought you were sneaking off for some hanky-panky—"

"Dad!" Babs interrupted, bright red now.

"—but if you wanted to mess around, without telling your good ol' dad so that he could take you to a gynecologist, you could probably just do that in that dang mansion of his," Mr. Gordon continued, unperturbed. Rick was pretty sure he was blushing too, at this point. "And I knew Jackson wasn't a friend from school, since you've never mentioned him, and no offense, Barb, but you don't make friends that fast. So I figured he needed some kind of help. Runaway or something?"

Rick looked to Babs. This was her dad; she could take the lead.

"Yeah," she said, sighing. "He was trying to get away from his dad. Rick got him a room for the night, and then we got him on a bus to Gotham. Mr. Wayne is going to make sure he gets into a shelter and gets a social worker assigned to him and everything."

It was an entirely plausible lie, Rick noted with relief, and she’d delivered it convincingly.

"Good," Mr. Gordon said. He was grinning. Rick had never seen that before. "Now, I hope you've learned from this little adventure: it's good to communicate with your dad. He might be an old man, but he's still got it. Get it?"

"I got it, dad," Babs said, sounding embarrassed and affectionate.

"Yes sir," Rick said.

"Now, let's get packed up," Mr. Gordon said. "I need to find out how much of a mess they've made of my city while I've been gone."

The car ride home was considerably less tense than the ride there had been. Well, Rick supposed, that was the point of vacations, wasn't it? Getting rid of tension. When they got to the mansion, he hugged Babs goodbye and shook Mr. Gordon's hand.

"You keep an eye on her," Mr. Gordon told him. "She's never gotten in over her head yet, but I'm sure she will one of these days."

"I'll keep as much as an eye on her as she lets me," Rick said. At that point, he was half-convinced that Mr. Gordon had figured everything out—that he was Robin and B was Batman, that Babs was helping them out, everything. He couldn’t think of a way to tell for sure, though. Mr. Gordon laughed.

"Can't ask for more than that," he said.

"Oh my god, you two, would you please stop your manly bonding over how much you want to protect me?" Babs said impatiently. "I haven't been at my desk in a week. I need to see my PC."

Mr. Gordon obediently got back in the car, and Rick waved goodbye as the two drove away. Once they were out of sight, he turned around to find that Alfred had already opened the door for him.

"I trust you enjoyed your trip, Master Rick?" he asked.

"I really, really did," Rick said as they went inside. "How'd B manage without me?"

"Better than might have been expected, though worse than he'll likely admit," Alfred said. "He was out to dinner with Miss Kyle and Miss Lewis when their restaurant was attacked by Dr. Crane."

"Oh, shi—shoot," Rick said. Swearing in front of Alfred always felt like farting in front of the Queen of England or something. "Did he get gassed again?"

"No," Alfred assured him. "Fortunately, Miss Kyle was able to hold the Scarecrow off while Miss Lewis and Master Wayne evacuated the civilians."

"...huh." Rick wasn't sure what to say to that. There were some perks to having your civilian identity publicly known, he guessed; Catwoman hadn't needed to find somewhere to hide and put on a mask before she could start kicking ass. "Well, is she okay?"

"More or less," Alfred said, somewhat cryptically. "I believe Master Bruce wished to discuss that with you, actually. He's downstairs."

Rick headed down to the Cave, where B was working at the computer. It looked like he was in full Batman-mode at the moment, even though he wasn't in costume, so Rick knew that hugs and "how was your vacation" type discussions would have to wait until later.

"Hey, B," Rick said cheerfully. "Heard you had to let Catwoman rescue you. Alfred said you wanted to talk to me about it?"

"Robin," B said, nodding in greeting but continuing to type. "Yes, I did. She was exposed to fear toxin. I gave her the antidote—I claimed that Robin met me in an alley and gave me some—but she's still experiencing the magical aftereffects. I wanted to discuss the idea of giving her one of the amulets."

"You wanted to discuss it?" That was unusual; B's decisions were usually pretty unilateral, unless Rick put up a fuss. "Why?"

"We only have three, now," B said, swiveling around in his chair to look at Rick. "If you, Oracle, and I are all exposed, we'll need all three. Your judgement on Catwoman is... less compromised than mine, so I wanted your opinion on whether it would be wise to trust her with such an integral  part of our defenses."

"Oh." Rick wasn't sure whether to be glad or worried that B recognized that his judgement on Catwoman was compromised. He had it really bad, huh? "Well, how is she handling the paranoia? And do you think she'd be willing to give the amulet back if we needed it?"

"I haven't told her about the magical aspect of Scarecrow toxin," B said. "I was hesitant to implicate Z. She's not very open about her emotional state—"

"Rich, coming from you—"

"So it's difficult to judge exactly how it may have affected her," B said as if Rick hadn't commented. "I doubt it will lead her to reoffend, although I can't be sure. I do think she would return the amulet if we needed it, although if all of us were exposed, I'm not sure it would do more good on Oracle than on Catwoman."

"B, you're talking like she's part of the team," Rick said.

"I know," he said. "I think maybe she should be. An auxiliary member, perhaps; I don't plan to reveal our identities to her. But I gave her a communicator."

"I'll have to warn Babs about that," Rick said. He sighed. "Okay, B. I know you wouldn't even bring up the idea if you hadn't thought it over from a million different angles, and you know I'm not against you having more help, especially with me and Babs starting Senior year before too long."

B nodded.

"I'll go by her apartment with an amulet after patrol tonight," he said. "Let Oracle know that Catwoman has access to our communications now."

"Will do," Rick said.

"And when you're done with that, I'm going to need a full debrief about Atlantis."

"Yeah, I figured," Rick said. "I'll write one up for you, but the title is going to be 'What I Did on my Summer Vacation.'"

"It's not going in the database with that title."

"I know." Rick paused. "Good to see you again, by the way."

"You too," B said—not particularly emotionally, but clearly sincerely. Rick would take it.


End file.
